Question

I have a custom html page which posts to php variables which then fills out custom sql queries.

function load_table($db, $old_table, $startRow, $nameColumn, $ipColumn, $addressColumn, $cityColumn, $stateColumn, $zipColumn, $countryColumn)
{
$select = "SELECT $nameColumn, $ipColumn, $addressColumn, $cityColumn, $stateColumn, $zipColumn, $countryColumn FROM " .$old_table.";";
$q = mysqli_query($db, $select);

return $q;
}

It works perfectly when all the variables are holding a value, but I need a way to dynamically assert this query, so that if the user is missing a column, i.e zip code is not in their table, it will still run without ruining the query.

Answer 1

$array = array();

if ($nameColumn)
    $array[] = $nameColumn;
if ($ipColumn)
    $array[] = $ipColumn;

// etc...

$cols = implode(',', $array);

if ($cols)
{
    $select = "SELECT $cols FROM $old_table;";
    $q = mysqli_query($db, $select);
    return $q;
}